Are you tough enough?

Ruthie stumbled across an interesting post from Dan Hull on the character of lawyers.

Ruthie’s experience is that the most successful lawyers are not the cleverest, but the most resilient. Unfortunately progression in life requires one to take risks, and taking risks means that on occassion one will fail. The most successful lawyers are the ones who can accept that occassionally making mistakes is the price of progression, pick themselves up, move on and vow not to make the same mistake again. The most successful of all are the ones who can make the same mistake a second time, pick themselves up and move on (although if you make the same mistake more than twice, you may want to ask yourself if you were really paying attention before).

There are some lawyers who will do anything rather than admit to making a mistake; lie, cheat steal, anything rather than look stupid. Unfortunately doing time looks very stupid indeed, and sometimes its better to fall on your sword, than take the chance that your next application will be a pro bono appeal for your cellmate.

Taking risks is an art in itself, and the more you do it the better and more confident you will become. Generally clients are not paying you to make the safest decisions; you are being paid to exercise your judgement to get them the best result. Client also generally neither expect or demand perfection; they want you to listen to them, take an interest in their case and try your best.

Curiously resilience is a quality rarely probed during interviews for training contracts, which increasingly require candidates to perform the complex and bizarre as firms desperately try to narrow down the huge numbers of applicants. Interestingly Ruthie would have failed to qualify for a training contract at any of the firms who subsequently employed her as a solicitor.

Ruthie’s recruitment advice is to pick someone who has succeeded against the odds. Chances are they will continue to do so.